21 April: Cape Town to Elgin Valley

Okay, so you may have noticed I skipped a day. The 20th April. Well, the day did very much happen, but since it was mostly comprised of a massive early birthday family lunch (for me) and a family farewell for my twin cousins (who were both heading off to start gap years in Europe on 24 April and 01 May). Make no mistake, it was a truly superb lunch (cooked mostly by my Mommy, but Daddio contributed a delish crayfish salad, at my request :) ) and a lovely day, but did not provide much blog-fodder that I thought would interest all of you.

The only time I left the house was a quick sunset walk on Noordhoek Beach, after everyone had left, with The Trucker (gotta get some sea sand between our toes while we can!). So I figured it was safe to skip ahead.

On the 21st I had hoped to go to Kirstenbosch and try out their new Boomslang Canopy Walk (which looks amazing!), but it still hasn't opened to the public yet ... so I'll have to save that for another trip (it opened this week!).

Instead we started the morning by taking Mom to breakfast at Tribakery. And then we packed up our stuff and headed out. Handy that we could leave all the bedding we'd brought for the train at Mom's while we Roadtripped (borrowed my gran's little Honda Jazz again).

Since it wasn't much of a drive to our overnight stop, I decided we should try a wine farm on the way ... although most of them were a bit out of the way, I'd been wanting to try Hidden Valley for a while now and it wasn't too much of a detour. PLUS they do a Chocolate & Wine Pairing. Hello? That sounds like it is worth a detour, for sure! Haha.

Shew, it is a beautiful venue. But it was very quiet since the restaurant, Overture, was closed ... being Easter Monday and all. Luckily they were open for tastings tho :) So I got myself a Chocolate & Wine Pairing and The Trucker did an Olive Tasting with his wine.

Stunning. And yummy. I forget now how much it was tho ... sorry. What a lovely afternoon. We'd definitely go back to try the restaurant or one of their picnics sometime.

And then we headed off in search of the Everson's Cider Tasting Room. We found the spot in Grabouw, which looks very like a house, and rung the bell at the gate. William Everson arrived to greet us and told us the tasting room wasn't open but they were doing tastings at Peregrine Farm Stall, back on the N2.

So we hopped back in the car and headed there. We got to try some of the Everson Wine (which I didn't even know about). After that, we headed to our first overnight stop, the Old Mac Daddy Trailer Park.

If you haven't heard of it yet, you are missing out. And if you're wondering if it's worth a visit, it most definitely is!

With twelve completely unique trailer options, I wasn't even going to try and chose one for our first visit and decided to leave it to chance (like I did at 12 Decades) and we ended up in the Birdy. Loved it.

It's one of the private ones, below the Parking for the Restaurant / Pool area (the majority of the trailers are on the hill above), and it has a gorgeous view of the lake. Even better, it has 2 swing chairs. The exact kind we'd been looking at, at the Rosebank Market to get when we build up our outside area at home! So it was nice to have an opportunity to really try them out :) We read our books and enjoyed the view.

A bit later, we took a walk down to the lake deck and then up to see the restaurant and pool area. Such a pity it was a bit chilly cause the pool area is gorgeous. And guess what! We bumped into a girl I work with, her husband and a couple of their friends.

We ended up having such a fabulous afternoon and evening chatting and drinking with them. And we discovered the wonders of Everson's new Cloudy Apple.

The food at the restaurant, Brinny Breezes, was delish ... for both dinner and breakfast the following morning. What a great spot. We'd definitely come back to try out another of their trailers!